Certain agricultural implements and machines, such as planters and nutrient applicators, till rows of soil to allow for seeds, fertilizers and the like to be embedded underground. Typically such implements and machines have an applicator mechanism and one or more upstream shank or injector knives that cut through the ground and create a trench or furrow into which the products are deposited.
A farmer's ability to efficiently and effectively carry out such operations is highly dependent upon various environmental and operational factors, for example including soil conditions (e.g., plant residue flow), ground travel speed and seal time between furrow opening and closing. Soil that is low in plant residue, such as loam (i.e., soil heavy in sand, silt and clay), allows for more rapid furrow seal time provided the planter mechanism is configured with the closing disks in close proximity to the furrow shank or injector knife. Hard soil that is high in plant residue requires increased furrow closing time to allow time for the plant residue to flow from the furrow, and thus the closing disks must be physically spaced from the knife to a greater extent to provide for the increased closing time needed to capture enough soil to adequately seal the furrow.
Some conventional nutrient applicator implements, for example, have a knife mounted in a fixed position relative to a pair of closing disks, which are mounted downstream from the knife away from the direction of travel. Such fixed mounting arrangements do not readily allow for adjusting furrow closing times depending on soil conditions and/or the speed of travel. This can cause various inefficiencies in the application process, for example, the escape of the gaseous nutrient composition prior to furrow sealing. To address this problem the travel speed of the nutrient applicator implement must be coordinated closely with the spacing of the closing disks from the knife. Speed fluctuations are therefore problematic. Overall changes in travel speed require remounting of the closing disks and/or the knife. Some conventional nutrient applicators allow for limited adjustment of the position of the close disks relative to the knife. However, the adjustments typically required tools, were limited to simple pivotal movement or lacked discrete settings for fixing disk position. The difficulty and limited adjustment often led to farmers continuing to operate the implement in the same position when working fields of different soil characteristics. The resulting application impairment in turn adversely affected productivity.